Help finding a hard error in Chromium / Balena Browser

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1

Hi,

I am displaying an operational rota with Balena-Browser. Works ok until the website issues a refresh. It does this every 5 minutes so support unattended displays.

When it refreshes, the whole page turns white. If I press F5 twice, the page returns still logged on.

My work so far has ruled out authentication and session issues. The page is still there with text when it’s queried with debug tools. It’s just all white.

AUTO_REFRESH=0
PERSISENT=1
RESIN_HOST_CONFIG_gpu_mem-256

If I can’t find a hard error, I can approach the web site owner about their refresh process to research a workaround.

Thanks, Lee

2

hello

  • how is the page being refreshed? is it via a requestanimationframe or setimeout or something alike?
  • does this work outside of using browser block? did you check this page refreshes without any issues on another host computer and perhaps using chromium/chrome or firefox just to rule out any thing related to the setup?

thanks

3

how is the page being refreshed? is it via a requestanimationframe or setimeout or something alike?

> The website refreshes every 5 minutes when a timeout disable cookie is installed.

does this work outside of using browser block?

> Yes, on windows.

did you check this page refreshes without any issues on another host computer and perhaps using chromium/chrome or firefox just to rule out any thing related to the setup?

>I was going to just create an install of Pi without Balena and try that. But I need Balena. So thought I’d try to get a hard error to progress.

4

Yes, I need to do this on Pi / Chromium outside Balena.

I’ll do this now.

5

some console logs at the time it refreshes would be good

you have AUTO_REFRESH=0 so i don’t think this is related to browser block in itself

which version of browser block are you using?

you have PERSISENT=1

did you map a volume to the browser container?

6

Hi,

The white page symptom does not write to the Balena log in the Dashboard above the terminal. There’s the standard booting stuff, but nothing for the white page timestamp. My understanding with this is because Balena or the Pi thinks everything is fine. This is why I went in the direction of looking for a hard error. Also…

Installed on my Raspberry Pi 4 (4GB) - Debian 3.5 (Trixie) without Balena. This worked and did not produce a white page. The Chromium version was 149.0.7827.

The Balena-browser white page replication version info is as follows: -

balenaOS 7.4.0 / Chromium 143.0.7499.40

I didn’t create a volume specifically as I thought it was done automatically. The PERSISTENT flag works as the cookie stays. (Unless it’s hitting storage issues!).

Other variables are in the Dashboard as -

AUTO_REFRESH 0
KIOSK 0
LAUNCH_URL my website
PERSISTENT 1

docker-compose.yml file -

version: ‘2’

volumes:
settings: # Only required if using PERSISTENT flag (see below)

services:

browser:
image: bh.cr/balenalabs/browser-aarch64 # where is one of aarch64, arm32 or amd64
shm_size: “256MB”
privileged: true # required for UDEV to find plugged in peripherals such as a USB mouse
ports:

  • ‘5011’ # management API (optional)

  • ‘35173’ # Chromium debugging port (optional)
    volumes:

  • ‘settings:/data’ # Only required if using PERSISTENT flag (see below)

The bullets have been converted from hyphens.

7

I don’t know how it’s refreshed other than it’s timed every 5 minutes and initiated by the website host or the cookie that gets installed for this specific timeout-disable purpose. Not sure if it’s through inactivity or just regardless. I’ll check if needed.

Not sure of the mechanism it’s using, I could possibly find out, but I would need guidance.

8

Is there a newer bh.cr/balenalabs/browser-aarch64 image based on Chromium 149+?

I’ve confirmed the issue disappears on Raspberry Pi OS running Chromium 149.0.7827 on the same Pi.